Collaborative Research -- Theoretical Investigations of Some Empirical Puzzles Regarding Behavior in Relationships with Asymmetric Information

该项目将开发正式的微观经济模型，以解决目前模型无法回答的两个重要问题。第一个项目将考虑持续关系中的合作和执行。 其目的是解释伴侣如何惩罚不良行为的重要而又知之甚少的行为模式。 例如，刑事司法系统的结构是对累犯的更严厉的惩罚，我们在其他关系中也观察到了这种模式。 另一个例子是垄断价格的卡特尔;通过从卡特尔伙伴那里窃取业务而拒绝遵守先前存在的卡特尔协议的公司往往不会受到整个卡特尔的惩罚。 同样，在其他情况下也观察到这种不惩罚。 虽然这些模式很普遍，但关于持续关系的标准经济学理论并不能充分预测我们何时会观察到这种行为。 相反，这些理论预测，惩罚应该是恒定的严厉，应该总是执行。 主要研究者将开发一种新的理论来解决这些问题。第二个项目试图解释为什么“50-50”规范在广泛的实际情况下具有影响力-例如公司之间的合资企业，农业中的共享租赁，朋友之间的餐厅账单分配-以及各种实验室设置。 主流经济学理论将这种行为归因于对公平的偏好，但未能对现有的实验证据提供完整的解释。 研究人员将开发和分析一个新的理论，假设人们喜欢被认为是公平的，以及更喜欢公平的结果。

This project will develop formal microeconomic models to address two important questions that cannot be answered with current models.The first project will consider cooperation and enforcement in ongoing relationships. The goal is to develop explanations for important and poorly understood behavioral patterns in how partners punish bad behavior. For example, the criminal justice system is structured with more severe punishments for repeat offenses, a pattern we have observed in other relationships as well. Another example is seen in price-fixing cartels; firms refusing to adhere to a pre-existing cartel agreement by stealing business from cartel partners are often not punished by the cartel as a whole. Again, such non-punishment has also been observed in other contexts. While these patterns are widespread, standard economic theories of on-going relationships do not do an adequate job of predicting when we will observe such behavior. These theories predict instead that punishment should be of constant severity and should always be carried out. The principal investigators will develop a new theory to address these issues.The second project attempts to explain why a "50-50" norm is influential in a wide range of practical circumstances - such as joint ventures among corporations, share tenancy in agriculture, the division of restaurant tabs among friends - as well as in a variety of laboratory settings. The leading economic theories, which attribute this behavior to preferences for fairness, fail to provide a complete explanation for existing experimental evidence. The investigators will develop and analyze a new theory that postulates that people like to be perceived as fair, as well as preferring fair outcomes.